Sr. Platform Technical Project Manager (TPM)

at  Comcast Corporation

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we’re making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements around the world.

JOB SUMMARY

The Senior Platform TPM is an integral role in the Platform Delivery discipline within the Global Product and Engineering Operations team. The scope of this role spans the global Engineering organization and focuses primarily on driving planning and execution activities within the platform product and engineering teams. This role will also periodically be responsible for managing strategic short- and long-term projects, event planning, reporting and other org-level programs. You will interact with a variety of stakeholders across the product and engineering disciplines, senior management, and other key partners (e.g., HR, Finance). You will have direct and meaningful impact on helping our teams efficiently and predictably deliver quality software.

JOB KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES (KSA’S)

• Experience: 4+ years’ experience in the Media or Advertising industry with a specific focus on SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) in a project, program, or operations role.
• Communication: Speak, listen, and write in a clear, thorough, and timely manner using appropriate and effective communication tools and techniques. Be transparent.
• Planning: Experience developing comprehensive project plans supporting technically focused projects and/or software development deliverables.
• Organization: Set priorities, track work, be transparent.
• Analyze: Effective at looking at data to inform an approach or decision.
• Creativity: Develop new and unique ways to improve operations of the organization and to create new opportunities.
• Lead: Work cooperatively and effectively with others to set goals, resolve problems, and make decisions that enhance organizational effectiveness. Positively influence others to achieve results in the organization’s best interest.
• Plan: Determine strategies to move the organization forward, set goals, create, and implement actions plans, and evaluate the process and results.
• Solve Problems: Assess problem situations to identify causes, gather and process relevant information, generate possible solutions, and make recommendations and/or resolve the problem.
• Consistent exercise of independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance.
• Regular, consistent and punctual attendance. Must be able to work nights and weekends, variable schedule(s) and overtime as necessary.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS

• Generally, requires 4+ years related experience.
• Proficient in Jira, Confluence, Smartsheet, MS Office products, especially Excel
• Bachelor’s degree in business or technology related field
• Corporate PMO experience an asset.

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s Degree
While possessing the stated degree is preferred, Comcast also may consider applicants who hold some combination of coursework and experience, or who have extensive related professional experience.

RELEVANT WORK EXPERIENCE

7-10 Years

Team Planning and Execution

• Be a true facilitator/leader to the teams; enthusiastically dive in and get your hands dirty while at the same time encouraging (and sometimes enforcing) the teams to efficiently and responsibly plan and execute their work following best practices and established business rules.
• Ensure that engineering activities (primarily in Jira) are accurately maintained in our systems of record, including statusing, linking to roadmap (in Aha), etc. Here, too, there will be a combination of hands-on contribution to maintaining the integrity of our product and engineering tracking systems, alongside driving the teams to accurately maintain their work in these systems.
• Coach teams on implementation of scrum ceremonies, ensuring adherence to planning and execution cadences.
• Lead “scrum of scrums” ceremonies across scrum teams, ensuring alignment and continuous improvement.
• Regularly report on team productivity, velocity, quality etc., actively seeking out opportunities to iterate and improve on both adherence to process and efficiency of software build and release activities.
• Understand the underlying team dynamics, help remove blockers and allow the team to operate smoothly.
• Provide metrics that allow the team to make data-driven decisions about how to operate better and deliver with peak efficiency, predictability, and quality.
• Partner with and support the Platform Execution lead, provide context and be able to coalesce the day-to-day, on-the-ground team behavior into a concise, clear story of how they are doing, where their challenges lie, and what strategies we should employ to improve

Team Planning and Execution

• Be a true facilitator/leader to the teams; enthusiastically dive in and get your hands dirty while at the same time encouraging (and sometimes enforcing) the teams to efficiently and responsibly plan and execute their work following best practices and established business rules.
• Ensure that engineering activities (primarily in Jira) are accurately maintained in our systems of record, including statusing, linking to roadmap (in Aha), etc. Here, too, there will be a combination of hands-on contribution to maintaining the integrity of our product and engineering tracking systems, alongside driving the teams to accurately maintain their work in these systems.
• Coach teams on implementation of scrum ceremonies, ensuring adherence to planning and execution cadences.
• Lead “scrum of scrums” ceremonies across scrum teams, ensuring alignment and continuous improvement.
• Regularly report on team productivity, velocity, quality etc., actively seeking out opportunities to iterate and improve on both adherence to process and efficiency of software build and release activities.
• Understand the underlying team dynamics, help remove blockers and allow the team to operate smoothly.
• Provide metrics that allow the team to make data-driven decisions about how to operate better and deliver with peak efficiency, predictability, and quality.
• Partner with and support the Platform Execution lead, provide context and be able to coalesce the day-to-day, on-the-ground team behavior into a concise, clear story of how they are doing, where their challenges lie, and what strategies we should employ to improve.

Partner with Engineering Operations team

• Help drive platform adoption of engineering best practices, enforcing correct usage of templates and tools.
• Align on engineering budgets.
• Work together to foster a culture of teamwork and commitment to best practices. While our EngOps and Platform Delivery teams can drive adherence to best practices, those practices will only truly take hold and bear fruit if we are successful in fostering a culture where everyone on the Product and Engineering teams is convinced of their value. The Senior Platform TPM will be key in driving this behavior.

Program & Project Management

• Projects will generally be assigned with a predefined goal and scope. In these cases, develop a project plan that lays out an approach and timeline to reach the goal. Collaborate with key stakeholders to execute the plan and deliver success.
• Some projects will be loosely defined and require you to hone the scope, solution, and schedule.
• Leverage internal tools for planning and execution (e.g., Smartsheet, Jira, Excel, Confluence, etc.) providing visibility and accountability for project team members.
• Escalate risks and drive towards solutions that mitigate risks proactively.
• Look for opportunities to create efficiencies and improve processes.

Operations and Business Administration

• Occasionally plan events within the platform engineering team(s), including liaising with local office admin team, coordinating event details, handling personnel and vendor logistics / communications, etc.
• Help monitor and manage platform budget forecast and actuals.
• Document all processes and apply continuous improvement.

Communication

• Provide regular clear updates to the roster of projects/programs/events you manage.
• Ensure quality written and verbal communication that is clear and concise.